John Arbuthnot Quotes

If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow.

Faith fills a man with love for the beauty of its truth, with faith in the truth of its beauty

Poor heretics there be,Which think to establish dangerous constancy,But I have told them, ‘Since you will be true,You shall be true to them, who are false to you.

Only those who live on the labor of the ignorant are the enemies of science. Real love and real religion are in no danger from science. The more we know the safer all good things are.

So over you is the greatest enemy a man can have — and that is fear. I know some of you are afraid to listen to the truth — you have been raised on fear and lies. But I am going to preach to you the truth until you are free of that fear...

The mortalist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution unto truth, has been a preemptory adhesion unto authority.

What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truth from its errors.

I don't know a greater advantage, than to appreciate the worth of an enemy.

This is true religion, to approve what God approves, to hate what he hates, and to delight in what delights him

The mighty power of logic cleanses all it touches.

I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter.

There is, in short, no great idea that stupidity could not put to its own uses [....] The truth by comparison, has only one appearance and only one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.

If a man cannot prove his religion in the valley, it is not worth anything.

The most eloquent eulogy of capitalism was made by its greatest enemy. Marx is only anti-capitalist in so far as capitalism is out of date.

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.

The whole point of faith, in fact, is to believe regardless of the evidence, which is the very antithesis of science.

Once a priest told us that no one gets up in the pulpit without promulgating a heresy. He was joking, of course, but what I suppose he meant was the truth was so pure, so holy, that it was hard to emphasize one aspect of the truth without underestimating another, that we did not see things as a whole, but through a glass darkly, as St. Paul said.

Be yourself and think for yourself, and while your conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the inclusions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping you in ignorance.

If I am able to determine the enemy's dispositions while at the same time I conceal my own, then I can concentrate and he must divide.

Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.

What is true never fears investigation; what is false... fears everything.

Truth is not the enemy and whatever does not kill us, sets us free.

Error, never can be consistent, nor can truth fail of having support from the accurate examination of every circumstance.

The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is the truth that exists for God. The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship possible: faith.